Wednesday, 15 March 2017

Love, and missing.

Last week, my beloved cousin came to stay.
She and I have known each other since we were nineteen, and we’ve been through
every emotional stretch: heartbreaks, deaths, funerals, failures, joys and
delights. Her husband is the dazzling horseman who sold me both my mares, and
he makes a joke about when I go to stay with them in the south: ‘you two start
talking the moment you get out of the car, and you don’t stop until you are
driving up the drive again.’ He’s right. We have never stopped talking for
thirty years. It’s the best talk I ever knew.

I put her up on the red mare, and they fell
in love with each other from the very first moment. Watching the two of them
together made my heart sing. They really are my two favourite people in the
world, and I wanted them so much to understand each other’s wonder, and so they
did.

It’s a year and a half since my mother died,
and in the last months I have congratulated myself for grieving Mum well. I
went straight at it, not looking to right nor left. I knew at least this much
about grief: you have to do it. You have to run at it. You can’t hide. I
thought I had done that, but something odd has happened lately. I’m missing my
mother so much I can’t breathe. I’m a huge believer in time, and I thought time
had done its thing. The ache fades, normality returns, joy can again shine through.
My mare gives me joy every morning, and I can make jokes, and I can smile. And
then, just when I think it’s all over, it comes at me again.

The beloved cousin knows all about the death
and the grief. I was with her through her mother, and her father, and her
brother. She was with me through my dad, and it was to her house that I drove
after my father’s funeral, as the bosky hedgerows bowed their heads in a
brightly absurd spring afternoon.

Sitting with her in my quiet house, I thought
how chipped around the edges we are, from life, from loss, and how we somehow
got good at buggering on. If you have a friend like that, you can deal with
anything.

All the same, I feel a fragility, which
alarms me a little. I thought I could put my head down and charge on. I thought
I only have sorrows to face which everyone faces. I thought I could forge on
into a bright future, that I could make that future exist through will and
stoicism and determination. I compare grief often to the sea. It is a thing of
waves and storms and tides. The tides ebb, and flow. I had learned to sail over
those big waves, and now they are bashing me a bit again.

Perhaps this is how it is for everyone who
loses someone they love. The brightness falls, and rises, and falls again. All
of which is a long way of saying: I miss my mother. I miss my father too. It’s
Cheltenham this week and I think of them both, because this was their place. My
father twice soared up that hill; his name is still carved on the silver
trophies that will be presented this week. My mum watched him, and she knew the
giants, talking in the stands with Fred Winter and Fulke Walwyn and Vincent O’Brien,
dressed in her elegant coats and her chic hats, watching the bright stars with
her focused race glasses. She was not merely a chic and soothing presence on
the racecourse, she qualified the hunter chasers, going out in all weathers, a
tiny human on vast, powerful, fit thoroughbreds, galloping and jumping flat out
all day long. (Despite the fact that his father was the master of the
Mid-Surrey Drag, my dad did not much like hunting, and was most happy when Mum
would do the work.)

The legacy they gave me was a love for the
thoroughbred and a fighting heart. They taught me good manners and if in doubt
be kind and never, ever to give up. They taught me enthusiasm, and to laugh at
myself, and always to be the person who bought the first round. They had
gloriously glaring flaws, and you could write a book about their human
frailties, but they left me with some tacit virtues that cannot be beaten.

As I write this, I think of the horses they
loved. I think of the love they passed on to me. I think of the great blazing
beauties out on the Cheltenham turf, and the sweet, gentle equine athletes in
the stable where I grew up, and the kind, soft mares who now live in my
Scottish field. I am a bit bent of out shape just now, for all that I put a
good face on it. I am a little tired and bruised. I am more overcome with the
missing than I would have thought. But my parents left me love – the example of
love as much as the giving of love. And that, I think, will in the end pick me
up and get me through.

9 comments:

I am always spellbound with your ability to transport us into your world, however jubilant or difficult your experience may be, I feel like I am living it with you. You are not alone, gifted one. There are no words to banish your grief, but I am sending you a ginormous cyber hug, and gratitude for sharing your journey with us all. Love, Julie Anne xo

I have recently begun to realize that other people don't get over their losses any better than I do; they just look like they do. As I probably look to other people. It's a trick of perception, I think. You have my sympathy.

Oh Tania - tears spring when I read this, I think we all thought that you'd look it in the eye this time and it would somehow be easier for the knowing. I suppose what this shows is that the human brain can't think its way out of the reality of the human condition. I want to a funeral last week - a lady I knew who'd lived a good, community-minded life -and I thought how unnatural it was that death should take place. Our society is simply no longer equipped for it! Somehow 100 years ago it was somewhat expected, now it seems rude and a bludgeon, as if it should have been conquered by our cleverness. I feel for you. I really do. Lou x

Your extraordinary eloquence illuminates how we process loss. This is absolutely perfect: "She was with me through my dad, and it was to her house that I drove after my father’s funeral, as the bosky hedgerows bowed their heads in a brightly absurd spring afternoon.Sitting with her in my quiet house, I thought how chipped around the edges we are, from life, from loss, and how we somehow got good at buggering on." I love your writing so much, Tania. xx

Bent Out of Shape Club: member signing in. I can't bear Cheltenham now for similar reasons that (to borrow your phrase) it is stitched into your heart. There is no map but those of us bringing up the rear may match our strides along the way.

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